Forget all the spin and footwork about how this budget had to be totally re-framed in response to COVID-19 and dismiss the picture of Treasurer Josh Frydenberg carefully crafting its parameters. The reality is the crisis simply offered Scott Morrison the opportunity cover to act exactly as he wanted to - an opportunity he's seized with both hands.
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More than any other government action in the last seventeen years, since the introduction of the GST, this budget is about changing fundamental settings in our economy. Its centrepiece is a huge money-shuffle. With its left hand government is borrowing money (on behalf of all Australians) before handing it to the upper-middle class (those earning from $90,000 to $125,000) with the other. Morrison is about to preside over one of the biggest mass transfers of wealth in the country's history, fundamentally shifting our attitudes to pay and rewards and establishing a new, decisive link with aspirational voters that has the potential to keep Labor out of office for at least a decade.
It's important to understand that although this is the fifth budget Morrison's had a hand in, this is the first time he's actually had the chance to act as he wants.
Although he became Treasurer in September 2015 the '16 budget was by dictated by Malcolm Turnbull with the coming July election in mind. That's when Morrison first sniffed the power of money but, hobbled by his PM, wasn't able to change anything. Turnbull never recovered from that year's election-night speech and then squandered the opportunity to use the '17 budget to build a legacy; something to be remembered for cementing into place a decade of wasted opportunity. By 2018, chaos and paralysis was enveloping the government as Turnbull struggled desperately to hang onto office. When Morrison finally became PM in August everything was thrown at one simple objective, getting 'back in the black' by 2018.
And we did that - remember? Well, that was the marketing spin, anyway, and Morrison wasn't having a bar of any querulous reporters who bothered pointing out that income didn't exceed expenditure. He dismissively brushed away any inconvenient facts failing to match the chosen narrative tropes. As far Morrison was concerned he'd (single-handedly) eliminated the deficit and it worked: that April budget set him up for his unlikely election victory in May 2019.
So that's the background. After the brief wobble of the bushfire crisis, Morrison today is supremely confident. He sincerely believes he's the 'father' of the nation. More importantly, he's figured out how to spend money and what budgets are all about. The difference today is that coronavirus has changed the political dynamic on spending and, for the first time, Morrison has the chance to do what he's always instinctively wanted to do: open the wallet and let it rip.
Morrison's insight has been to comprehend just how this tiny virus has suddenly upended all the political certainties of the past thirty years. The previously forbidden (deficits) have suddenly become not merely permitted, but a sign of virtue and the PM, a naturally expansive man, won't let the chance go to waste.
Unlike those other recent long-term Treasurers Peter Costello and Wayne Swan, Morrison's not a natural tightwad. He believes in the prosperity gospel; that money can and should flow freely to those who believe and work hard. The whole point of government is, he believes, to allow this to happen and that's why he's throwing money at people who don't need it.
As a former advertising man and Liberal Party director he understands, viscerally, that nobody identifies as a loser because we all want to be winners. And that's why all the rewards are targeted exactly at that upper-middle class, earning over $90,000. These are, today, the equivalent of Menzies' 'forgotten people'. They're tradies, teachers and police, public servants and 'working families' - they are, in fact, exactly the people who live in swinging electorates and determine the next government.
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So that's why it doesn't matter to him if Labor quibbles about the size of the massive deficit or points out how the rewards are flowing disproportionately to those who are already rich. Morrison doesn't care if the opposition wants to make his point for him. He's pleased with his work.
Governments don't get many opportunities to establish the key settings that will mark their achievement - or failure - in office and the budget is critical to this. Since the 2008 financial crisis successive politicians have voluntarily allowed their hands to be tied by the need to balance spending with restraint. Morrison's burst free of those chains.
He's not embracing Modern Monetary Theory because he's become a believer to its economics. He understands, rather, how it's aligned directly with his religious beliefs and offers the key to salvation - not simply economically, but politically as well.
This budget, the middle budget of Morrison's first three-year term, was always going to be critical. It's the only one he could use to send out vital messages to its supporters about his priorities, what he believes is really important and what his government is really all about. In doing so he's embraced borrowing and is reshaping Liberal priorities in a way that's at once both previously unimaginable and politically brilliant. The only way Labor can criticise his spending is if they attack the aspiration swinging voters they need if they want to win the next election. That's why Albanese has been very careful to confine his attacks to those who've lost out - women and the young.
Morrison doesn't care. He's establishing markers that will shape society far into the future. Morrison has no regrets about abandoning the old economic orthodoxy last Tuesday: he's establishing a new religion for tomorrow.